Re: [gNewSense-users] ATI blobs

[Jason Self]

On Jan 8, 2010, at 10:56 AM, Sam Geeraerts wrote:

> Jason Self schreef:
>> On Jan 7, 2010, at 12:55 PM, Dmitry Samoyloff <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Jason Self wrote:
>>>> I have RV620.
>>> 
>>> OK, it's R600 family.
>>> 
>>>> After it arrived I found that support for RV620 didn't appear in
>>>> radeonhd until version 1.2 and the version in the gNewSense
>>>> repositories was too old.
>>>> 
>>>> A quick compile later and I had a fully functional video card. The 2D
>>>> performance is just fine and I find X to be very snappy. Even my 1080p
>>>> videos play well (they're using Theora and that codec admittedly isn't
>>>> very demanding in the first place.)
>>> 
>>> Do you have XVideo working (you may check it using "xvinfo" command)? If 
>>> your
>>> video playback is smooth, I suppose you have it. R600 have only textured Xv,
>>> therefore it needs accelerated OpenGL working also. Recompiling driver isn't
>>> enough for that, you'd need the latest Mesa and latest DRM (direct rendering
>>> manager) module for Radeons.
>>> 
>>> The latter contains blobs. It located either in Linux (starting from 2.6.32)
>>> or in Mesa/Xorg. 3D acceleration wouldn't work on R600 with deblobbed
>>> software. If you have accelerated 3D working (it could be checked seeing
>>> "glxinfo | grep OpenGL" output) then your system is using ATI blobs.
>> I can check when I get home on the 17th. All I did was compile radeonhd from 
>> source (version 1.2.5, I think. I haven't bothered to upgrade to 1.3.0) and 
>> then modify my X config to use radeonhd instead. It was nice to see my LCD 
>> panel run at full resolution. There aren't any blobs, unless the act of 
>> compiling radeonhd somehow pulled in extra software over the net without my 
>> knowledge.
> 
> This would be interesting to know. I've heard from a Nouveau developer that 
> Nouveau was nearing blob-free status, but that radeon(hd) still has blobs 
> that have something to do with microcode and that there are no (short term) 
> plans to get rid of those. I haven't verified or investigated this in any 
> way, though.

So I am back from my vacation now.

$ xvinfo
X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
 no adaptors present

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL
OpenGL vendor string: Mesa project: www.mesa3d.org
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa GLX Indirect
OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.1 Mesa 7.0.3-rc2)
OpenGL extensions:

I started with the normal gNewSense 2.3 install & the only thing I did was:

wget 
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-radeonhd/snapshot/xf86-video-radeonhd-1.2.5.tar.bz2

Followed by the usual...
 
./autogen.sh
make
make install

And then edit my X config to use radeonhd. So have I been using binary blobs 
without realizing it?

I haven't upgraded to 1.3 yet.